The development of robotics and autonomous systems in Australia: key issues, actors, and discourses

ABSTRACT

Robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) are amongst a plethora of new and emerging technologies states are seeking to develop and use to gain military advantage in an environment of intensifying strategic competition. Australia is a key player when it comes to autonomous systems, with trusted autonomous systems (TAS) being earmarked as a priority area. RAS have taken an increasingly prevalent place in Australian research, discourse, military thinking, and defence industry. How Australia thinks about these technologies reveals important insights into their broader defence and strategic outlook, including their understanding of how the character of warfare is changing, and their approach to alliances and partnerships. In this article, I will trace how TAS became a priority area for defence in Australia, and provide a stocktake of the key developments in RAS which have taken place since 2016. This will include key actors, funding, discourses, and technologies. Taking stock of RAS in Australia reveals several key themes which stand out: the centrality of the concept of control, trust, ethics, interoperability, keeping ahead of adversaries, reducing danger to defence personnel, and developing systems which are cheap, small, and single-use.

KEYWORDS:

• Trust
• robotics and autonomous systems
• trusted autonomous systems
• lethal autonomous weapons systems
• Australia

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Jeremy Moses and Geoff Ford for their support and feedback throughout the development of this research, the two anonymous reviewers for their kind and insightful feedback and the Marsden Fund Council (Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi) for funding the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Marsden Fund Council (Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi), Marsden Grant 19-UOC-068: ‘Issue Mapping and Analysing the Lethal Autonomous Weapons Debate.’

Notes on contributors

Sian Troath

Sian Troath is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Canterbury. Sian’s current research focuses on the political and defence implications of the lethal autonomous weapons debate in Australia, using theories of trust to analyse relationships between states, and Australian foreign and defence policy.